This article examined the differences between rural/urban older adults in their trajectories of activities of daily living (ADL) over a 4-year period. The sample included 2,490 community dwelling older adults who completed three waves (1998, 2000, and 2002) of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. Among them, 63.5% were from rural areas. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was run for the whole sample and separately for rural and urban samples. For both rural and urban samples, older age and involvement in fewer activities predicted increases in ADL difficulties over time. In addition, being female and routinely smoking predicted increases in ADL difficulties for the rural sample. Implications for interventions to slow down ADL decline were discussed.
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